So this is the very first post of my life/school journey section of my blog that many of you have been asking about! I’ve been thinking about it & thought, you know, why not! 😇

I enjoy reading personal journeys more than recipes personally too, so I totally relate & just want to provide you guys with as much value as I can.

Before we jump in

In this post I’m going to be talking about my journey to where I am academically as a senior, studying Psychology, Nutrition & Health Promotion, with the goals of becoming a Naturopathic Doctor for those of you curious about how to get into the field OR just curious about how to navigate college. I’ll be touching on my experience choosing majors, the difficulties I encountered and how I ultimately chose one I love. I will also touch briefly on where I am now and what my future career goals are!

Background

For those of you who don’t know me too well yet, since starting undergrad, I’ve switched majors like 10 times (jk only 3 but still) and have definitely felt alone at times in my confusion about the “right thing to do”…”the best option for me”…

I have always been so fascinated by our Western system’s assumption that 18 year olds know exactly what they want to do with the rest of their lives as soon as they land on a college campus, let alone what major will best suit them! *Ohhh America, gotta love ya*

By the way, based off my Swedish family, I can confirm this is not a global phenomenon—what’s up with the US?

I digress...

Anywho, I am personally lucky to have come into college with a very strong passion for holistic health & a fairly clear big-picture idea of what I want to do as a career: Go into a career in health that will allow me to positively impact as many people physically and emotionally as possible. That being said, it was still incredibly difficult for me to figure out (I’m still figuring it out) the absolute best route to take to get there. Do I just take the traditional, “study biology” route? Or do go with my gut & study psychology as my foundation then build from there? Do I abandon medicine completely and go into business because, money 💰 and less schooling??

My comforting realization

No matter what your field or interest I’m sure you can relate to the overwhelming abundance of possibilities that are handed to us during our late teens and early 20s. We feel like we should have it all figured out, or at least the majority of us do...but the reality is, none of us do. I’ve learned that people talk & they talk a lot. All this talk can make you feel like you don’t have a clue what’s going on in your life, but newsflash, whether you are 15 or 40 you are STILL figuring it out 💁🏽‍♀️ so don’t panic. Those that talk the most usually do the least ;)

What I did

So, because I knew I wanted to go into holistic health of some kind, I chose the pre-med route my freshman year and I wish I could say that was it. Buuuut, It wasn’t.

Cue transferring schools, new boyfriend and new friends who were into business and bye bye 👋🏽 pre-med. In hindsight, during a time of such transition, I was so vulnerable and suggestible and have absolutly no “regrets” as I learned so much about myself. Long story short, I got confused—I let my long term goals get overshadowed by the “now” and academically felt confused for a year.

After many a’ break downs and phone calls with my mom, I got my head back on, had a moment of higher intuition and declared my major in Psychology with a minor in Nutrition & Health Promotion. Honesty, I chose this combination based off pure passion for all three subjects and I thank God that USC was able to make this combination work for me. Buuuut during my year of suggestibility I did drop my pre-med track...which I’ll revisit below. Still, though there were ups and downs, everything worked itself out like they always do IF you 1) truly believe they will and 2) take action based off your inner intuition.

What I wish I did

So if I could turn back the clocks of time, I would tell myself and anyone struggling with these big decisions to:

Literally draw out a map of your ideal life. I’m talking career, location, etc. Do it alone, without anyone whispering in your ear. If money didn’t matter, what would get you up every morning? For me that would be helping people find themselves (mental action) & their health (mental & physical action). Therefore I chose Psychology and Nutrition and Health Promotion. Note that though I didn’t do this when I was struggling through my sophomore year, I have since done this many times since and it has helped me so much...

Be aware of how influenced you are by others and others goals—be honest about your ability to be suggestible! I have had to learn the hard way that I am prone to be influenced by other people’s dreams and thus their agendas, not because I don’t have my own, but because I’m a very excitable person & therefore I can get excited about just about anything temporarily whether that be marketing or fashion. But at the end of the day, when I sit by myself, I have a passion: it’s always health.

Where I am now

Now, 3 years later, after what seemed like a never ending road to uncertainty, I can honestly say as a senior, I’m so happy with where I am. I went with my gut to stray off the traditional biology path to major in Psychology, a true fascination, in undergrad and now I have a unique perspective to bring to the table in my future career. Not to mention, when you truly honor yourself, the universe just really works for you. Its crazy to say but the same things I was worried over just a couple years ago (my major choice, etc) are the same things that are bringing me new opportunities directly related to my combined interest of psych & holistic health!

Not to mention, some of us cough me just have a rebellious spirits and can never seem to be satisfied with the “normal route”—not once has that backfired on me. So long as you have good intentions, just go for it.

So basically now I’m in my senior year of college with a future in Naturopathic Medicine on the horizon. I did mention that I gave up my pre-med track (aka the hard sciences) during my “lost phase” which means I’ll have to make up those courses before jumping into my ND program after I graduate, but honestly, still no regrets! It feels much nicer to accept the past and see the beauty in the way things unfold than gripe over bumps in the road! Now, with my decisions all made, I’m just working to prepare myself as much a a possible for the future of being an ND which has its own application process and school picking and location change that I’ll cover in another post if you’d like? Oooo, also, like I said earlier, I think that when you are living your passion or rather, making strides to get thereat the universe works for you. Well, I’d say since about March of this year when I officially declared to the universe/God that I’m set on being an ND, I’v high-key manifested connections that are coming out of seemingly nowhere. The best of which is with an incredible ND who is truly living my dream and who I got the opportunity to shadow a couple weeks ago which...wow. Was quite the experience!!

Please let me know in the comments if you’d like me to write a post on that experience 👩🏽‍⚕️ and I’d be happy to!

That’s all I have for ya right now ☺️ Thank you so much for reading and again, if you liked my first life/school post please let me know—not to boost my ego (lol) but so I know whether to continue this part of the blog!